Category Archives for Hotels.
Marriott has devalued Bonvoy points for booking Homes and Villas redemptions. Marriott has a curated competitor to Airbnb, Bonvoy is one of the key selling points against this behemoth competitor with a huge head start in the space. But Marriott has chosen to erode its advantage.
Put another way, given broader devaluations in the program over the past couple of years, Marriott is just playing catchup adjusting down the value of points for homesharing stays.
The Andaz Singapore is taking a page from airline Basic Economy fares, offering a new ‘room only’ rate. When you think of room only, you may assume that it simply excludes breakfast or other inclusions. In this case they mean it literally: you can stay in the room, but have no access to the hotel’s gym or pool.
This also lets them sell rooms for less on third party websites without running afoul of best rate guarantees, since the restriction doesn’t apply to Hyatt direct booking rates.
One feature of the Hilton Honors Diamond program is that members can gift someone Gold status when they reach 60 qualifying nights in a year. If they stay 100 nights, the gift becomes Diamond status.
In addition to this standard offer, Hilton will allow all Diamonds to gift someone elite status this year. Diamond members can gift Gold status, lifetime Diamonds can gift Diamond status.
Officers found shell casings and a bullet hole in the door. The man was in critical condition. 25 year old Chicagoan Ann Marie was charged with possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Her 2019 album was “Pretty Psycho.”
Hyatt has reduced the qualification requirement for top tier Globalist status from 60 nights to 30 nights for 2021.
You can get double the annual elite nights from a new Hyatt card, stays in January and February count double, and award nights – which start at just 5000 points – count too. Plus Hyatt is rebating points spent on redemptions. You can earn top tier elite status and come out ahead on points.
In March 2017 World of Hyatt replaced Hyatt Gold Passport. Nothing changed about earning or redeeming points, this was entirely a change to Hyatt’s elite program.
Hyatt’s cutting elite qualification requirements in half for 2021 seems surprisingly like rolling back the clock to Hyatt Gold Passport.
Hyatt is cutting elite status requirements in half for 2021. They are giving extra elite nights to people who get their credit card by the end of the year. They are running double elite qualifying nights for the first two months of 2021 (and stays at the end of 2020 will also earn an elite night for 2021). Spending points transferred from Chase or the initial bonus on their credit card on free nights count towards status and they’re even rebating points.
Taken together Hyatt status is going to be very easy to earn in 2021 for the rest of that year and all of 2022. However Hyatt has decoupled some elite benefits from status, and reserves those for people staying a specific number of nights. The nights requirements for ‘Milestone Rewards’ have not been reduced.
Outside of Chase transfers to Hyatt, conversions of transferrable points into hotel points is simply a bad deal and a 30% transfer bonus doesn’t reverse that calculus. American Express points are just too valuable to transfer to Marriott given the weak transfer ratio.
Hyatt is cutting in half the number of nights required to earn elite status in 2021, and extending several promotions into early 2021. You can earn status easily just with a Hyatt co-brand credit card too.
Marriott is offering about 90% of their 7500 hotels at off peak redemption prices for bookings made by December 14 and stays through February 28, 2021.
A Marriott spokesperson says “Of the 90% of properties offering solely off-peak rates, about two—thirds of those properties had previously been offering a mix of rates during the promotional stay period.” And that just shows that Bonvoy has been gouging members for redemptions at a majority of its hotels.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
